Learn to Thrive With Your Life

0:01 This program is designed to provide general information with regards to the subject matters covered. This information is given with the understanding that neither the hosts, guests, sponsors, or station are engaged in rendering any specific and personal medical, financial, legal counseling, professional service, or any advice. You should seek the services of competent professionals before applying or trying any suggested ideas. At the end of the day, it's not about what you have or even what you've accomplished. It's about what you've done with those accomplishments. It's about who you've lifted up, who you've made better. It's about what you've given back. Denzel Washington, welcome to inspire vision. Our sole purpose is to elevate the lives of others and to inspire you to do the same. Brad and Seyway, how are you doing it? Hi, Doctor Doug. It's great to be here with you. Hey, it's great to have you on the show.

1:02 I really appreciate it. Now you're heading out in California, right just north of San Francisco. Okay, great, So share with the audience who you are and how did you get to the point that you're at and what motivated you to write your book, which is called Thriving. I feel very, very fortunate with the life I've lived. One of the things I learned in high school was to be excellent. I became an excellent student. I've carried that through and everything I've done in my life. I went to Stanford Business School and from after receiving my MBA, I went to the caverns of Wall Street. I spent a dozen years with major firms and realized along the way that I really wanted to have my own firm. And it took a while to do that because it had to be focused, it had to have a clear set of principles, and I did that three decades ago. I have a fantastic wife forty three years now and two marvelous kids, and I've served on a lot of boards over the years. I've been a Scout master, a Little League coach, and I'd like to say I'm an roll up my sleeves environmentalist doing conservation work as well. Okay, and what motivated you to write your book? Well, the original concept was that it was going to be a legacy project for family and close friends. But as I got more

2:38 into it and I got feedback from some readers and a content editor who were saying, this is a big book and it really should be out to a lot of people. I changed. I switched gears, and I said, well, I want to make a published book. I wanted to me have it be really high quality, and off I went. The process started four years ago. The book was published last fall, and it's getting amazing reception. So are there are there any incidents in your life that really gave you that aha moment to write the book and to go into that direction, Because certainly the book is not necessarily about if I can understand it correctly, it's not necessarily about your success as a businessman. But at the same time you probably use those stories to help do that. But what what is the motivation behind that book to really try to help people in their relationships and those type of things. Well, over the many years, in all the different blocks that I've walked around, whether it's in the in the service world of beyond boards or having clients where I was their most trusted advisor, being a littlely coached or a scoutmaster, I saw people and just very very fine people stuck in some cases, stuck, maybe confused, and I realized that there were

4:10 a lot of things I had learned along the way, and I wanted to share some of my observations. So there's a lot of tips, some techniques and approaches to living life. I like to say that Hamlet, you know, Shakespeare's Hamlet, said the big question is to be or not to be? And I say, a much bigger question is how to be and how not to be? And that's really what my book is about, Okay and thriving. So that's that's the term to how can we really be and become? So in your concept of success, what is that? What does that mean to be successful in our lives? Well, I pushed back as hard as I possibly can around what I think our society thinks of the success, which is really very narrowly focused around financial things. Yeah, it's important, of course to do well and to be comfortable, but after that the focus needs to really be internal. What is going to drive you forward, what's going to give you purpose, what's going to give you energy. Life is not about longevity, it's about vitality. So I think there are a lot of elements to this that are important to embrace. They include things like being grateful and being helpful to others. I like to say that love in a

5:44 narrow romantic way is great if you have it, but a bigger way of holding love is to have love as a way of being, which is being kind and respectful and being generous and listening hard to somebody, being interested in somebody else. Well, and at this point in time, we see what's going on right now among campuses on the US side as totally opposite of what you were just saying, what's going on and why on earth in your opinion are we having all of this type of animosity and anger and those type of things going on? And you know, I suppose people are trying to say, well, you know, we're going to be successful at accomplishing this, and so on and so forth. But what's the deal. What do you find is going on at least in your opinion as to why that's happening, and how does that fit into being able to learn how to really be, how to become, how to achieve a true success in our lives. Well, I think thriving is really all about making choices. And when you hold on to the steering wheel and you're driving your own vehicle, you decide how fast to go and when to stop, and when to turn right and left, and you include being positive. Being positive adds eight to nine years to your life. That what you can then start stop doing is paying attention to

7:15 cynicism and really a lot of negative stuff. We're living in a world is full of cynicism. There's a lot of fear and anger out there as well, which is being fanned. There's a lot of flames blowing around that, and as you say, a lot of that's on college campuses as well. So I'm aware of what's going on, but I don't drink from the fire hose of that stuff because it doesn't help me. It actually makes me unhappy. I think there's antidotes to that. I think civil discourse is something that can learn, we can practice. There's ways to go from debate, which is about being making somebody right and you're you know we're wrong and you're right, to more of a dialogue and trying to explore what do we have in common. These are really important techniques and behaviors to try to emulate. And I'm hoping actually to take my book onto the college campuses as a course because I think there's a lot of elements to this, in building relationships, in living a valuable, fulfilling life that you know young people or even people and continuing ed could appreciate holding on too well. And how much how much do you feel like the subconscious imprints that we have received in our lives, and

8:50 we all have gotten them from various sources and environmental but how much do you think that that is affecting our ability to really thrive in life and to experience, in my opinion at least that joy, that happiness, that piece that life is good. They're headwinds, There's absolutely no question about it. Their headwinds. The media is the kind of common culture we have. Even some of the fun, fun things movies in Hollywood and so on, some of the music that's out there that's fairly popular, are not necessarily very conducive to getting on to reaching your potential, to really looking at yourself. That the beginning of thriving is about knowing yourself. And that's not something everybody's willing to do. And it's not a one and done proposition either. You got to keep going back. The world changes, you change, and so you've got to keep looking at those issues. Who am I what's important to me?

9:58 What kind of person do I want want to be? I like talking about zig Zigler. Zig Zigler one of the great motivational speakers. He passed away a dozen years ago, and he said, Yeah, you want to be the kind of person where if somebody said something bad about you, no one would believe it. That's a fantastic way to live life. Nobody would believe that you were anything but a good person, an honorable person, a kind person. It's important. Well, and I know that you have an undergraduate degree in psychology, which is which is fascinating because you know you go in all these different directions. So how much of that has motivated you to go into this direction? Because you're really talking about and to some degree you know human behavior, psychology, those type of things. How how did you get motivated in that direction? Well? I have a degree in mathematics and psychology, and both of them have supported me very very well throughout my investment banking career, doing very complex transactions for corporations. And the psychology plays in because my starting place has always been to understand my client's objectives. If we complete a transaction that misses those objectives, it may be checking the boxes in terms of the financial outcome, but it doesn't do what they need to do for

11:30 them personally or for their employees. It can be not a good situation. And so I've been up close and personal with that issue for many, many decades, and I hold it near and dear to my heart. You know, I want to do the best job I possibly can. This is back to this excellence thing. So I you know, I listen hard, I ask really tough questions, and if we don't have answers yet, that's okay. We'll keep talking about it. And you know, I build a trusted relationship with people. They feel comfortable. I'm willing to be vulnerable so I can tell a story or two about how I didn't know everything, and that wasn't easy for me to do in the early part of my career. Is getting a lot easier now, and it allows them to open up and talk about what they're concerned about and the worries they have a lot of privately held companies, being the CEO is a very lonely proposition. And when I come along and we're talking about maybe the most critical transaction of their business lives, Wow, I get a lot of their attention. All that, and you know, you talk about a lonely existence in business as a CEO, but how many do you think of us are experiencing in our lives a lonely existence

13:03 without the business part. Well, I don't have a really good grasp of that. Frankly. I'm trying to inspire and encourage people to build relationships. There's an architecture to doing that, and you can make a relationship deeper and more enduring by doing certain things, and you can also hurt a relationship in lots of ways. So I'm out there talking about it. There's a lot of that in my book. So building relationships is an antidote for being lonely. But at the same time, I think it's really important to spend some time by yourself, maybe taking a walk, being in nature. You know, I consider myself to be a fairly spiritual person because when I'm out in nature, I feel full of wonder, I'm in awe, and I feel a lot of humility. Those are all really really good things to have, man, and I can bring it back to me, back back into you know, the relationships, back into the work I do with freshness, with a vigor, Well, and you talk about building relationships, how you can build good relationships or you can actually ruin relationships. And you said that there's some specific test, you know, steps that you mentioned in your book.

14:26 Could you share that with the audience. What are those steps for people to really build good relationships in their lives? Well, I talk about it in the book. Is a ladder A ladder where you meet somebody and you're friendly, it's very casual, but then you see them the next time. Maybe they're a neighbor, maybe they're part of some group you belong to, maybe it's a religious institution, and you remember their name. It's really important. And if you have to ask for their name, and again that's okay. It's easy to just say, oh, by the way, my name is Rand. Please remind me. I've I apologize, I've forgotten your name.

15:07 Doug. Well, of course I wouldn't say Doug at that point. But then, but but you know, then it then it begins building a little bit of a bridge. Then then you ask them some questions, Uh, you know, how long have you lived here? Tell me what you do when you're not here, What's what's of interest to you? You've always lived here? You just bit by bit. They're simple questions, they're easy, they're not very scary. It's kind of like your favorite color. You know, people usually willing to say, my favorite color is green or blue or whatever it is. It's okay. But you build on that, and then you might get to the point of saying, well, let's do something together. You want to take a walk, or you want to have a cup of coffee, spend a little bit more time than just that two minutes, three minutes in a in a sort of casual passing each other by briefly.

15:58 Now you get into deeper and deeper conversations. You share more about yourself what's important to you, and you ask questions and you listen hard, and before you know it, if you're on that path, some people will say, hey, you know, nah, thanks, I've got all the friends I need, or whatever you said is just you know, fine for you, but it's not of interest to me. That's fine, that's just terrific, that's okay. But other people will be attracted to you. And if you're again, if you're positive, you're cheerful, and you're appreciative, you become attractive. So people say, well, I want I do want to have that cup of coffe of you? Yes, I do want to take that little walk with you. That'd be fine. Sure. So how much of this, as you're observing this, and I know you talk you talk a bit about how to strengthen your emotional health, how much of our emotions really affect our experience in life? Based on your experience, and how do we deal with that? Because there's so many people that I've interviewed who have worked through some horrific emotions and been able to reach a point now where they're doing some real good in the community. But at the same time, I've observed, and I'm sure you have too, that there are others who have allowed those emotions, those imprints, all those things that have happened in childhood and

17:32 so on so forth, to literally sabotage their experience in life and they're not thriving. They find themselves as victims. In fact, they kind of fit into that whole victim mentality, which obviously is not on an emotional quotient standpoint, is not where they want to be. So how do you find people can really develop their emotional strength and really reach a point in time they're able to let go of all of that junk and stop the self sabotaging that's going on. Well, you've just highlighted so many critical ingredients to what emotional health is all about. And let me just go back and spend a minute with several of these one stopping self sabotaging. You know, this is not something that I have ever had to deal with, but I see a lot of other people do, and I continue to be a little surprised by it.

18:34 Self sabotaging is you're not even willing to get into the game. You're not going to apply for the job. You're not going to put your hand up and volunteer. You're not going to follow up when somebody says, oh, that'd be nice to you know, exchange emails or whatever, and you say, no, I'm not going to do that. I don't really think the person's interested in me. Well, there's so little risk to try, and if the answer is no, we don't need to. You know, you're not a good candidate for our training program. You know, they really were being just you know, superficial with you, and they're not going to fall up. You'll find that out soon enough. But maybe there's some nugget of goodies there, so stop self sadtizing. Shooting yourself in the foot. It's the next worst thing to shooting yourself in the head. So that's one thing.

19:25 A second thing is learning to forgive. And you talked about childhood and some of these things. A lot of the forgiveness that I hear people talking about goes way back, way back, something that happened when they were kids. I talk about in the book the ACE Test the Adverse Childhood Experiences. It's a very simple test. You answer ten questions pretty much yes or no. Did any of these things happen before you were aged eighteen? I scored a three. And what's amazing to me about this is if you score four or more, there's an eighty percent chance that you will have lifelong mental or physical problems. So it's an important thing. We're getting better at early intervention with that. The other thing's interesting about the ACE test being in all these adverse childhood experiences is that we don't understand this yet. Is there some people turned into dandelions? They can grow in the cracks of the sidewalk there's no water. I'm a dandeliont my sister. I think isn't fortant a little papa win and she's blown over. Did we grow up in the same household, Yes we did, but we're very different. We have a different experience of life and a different experience growing up and with our parents. So the whole

20:55 issue of forgiving, you have to forget other people. You have to just work it. It's not just snap your fingers necessarily, but you've got to get the point otherwise it's heavy rocks you're carrying around with you and they can burden you for a long time, and you have to forgive yourself. Take a look, be honest, what mistakes have you made? Maybe they were intentional, maybe they were unintentional. You got to say to yourself, hey, what role did I play in that? And own up to it and then apologize, make restitution as best you can. But then at the end of the day, whichever kind of thing happened, you learn from your mistakes and you let you let you move on, so it's not in the way of you moving forward in life. And then the third thing is you've mentioned this also Dot Doug is letting go. I think a lot of my business success had to do with me being in control. I laid out the program.

21:56 I knew what was going on. I hired lawyers, I you know, dealt with you know, the accountants. You know. I had a nice relationship with my clients, so they said, well, what should we do next? All that stuff being in control. I kind of ran my family that way too. But then about a dozen years ago, as my kids were getting married and doing extremely well in life, they were making choices that I would not have made for them, I would not made for myself, but they were working out for them, and I said, well, they're not asking me, in my opinion, well, nor should they necessarily have to. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. So I began a process of learning to let go. That's been one of the hardest things I had to do. And I like doing this little exercise. If you want to do it with me, that'd be great. Okay. So you hold your fist up and you're holding onto something, and you see your knuckles, you see the white knuckles there, and you're holding on. You're holding on tight. This might have been going on for weeks or years or decad and you haven't been able to go. Then you turn your fist over and you see the knuckles on the other side, same thing. You've not been able to go. But now you realize, wait a minute, I'm in charge, I am powerful. I can make some choices. I'm going to decide right now to let go of that. You open your hand, you wiggle your fingers and your thumb, and you let go that thing, and your hand rises because that weight is no longer so burdensome. So I started doing

23:27 this about a dozen years ago. When I started doing it, I was doing it with some regularity. And now I'm doing it I don't know every couple of months. But when I find myself, you know, struggling around letting something go, I'm not in control. I'm not in charge. Somebody's not asking my opinion or my opinion doesn't matter. I do have the exercise, and it helps me. I laugh at myself. Well, and that's that's just you know, a many extraes. Have you ever gotten into meditation or have you observed people being able to really learn to let go, to forgive, to go through that whole process through some type of form of meditation or therapy or whatever that happens to be. And actually, you know, your fist example really is a short form of meditation and consciousness and mindfulness.

24:22 Yes, yes, well I agree. I think the whole mindfulness world in whichever form that takes place, and there are different forms. For me, I think it's primarily being outdoors of nature and often by myself, and just slowing things down and watching some little bug, some flower unfolding, and just I can almost steel my heart slowing down and breathing and breathing and saying to myself, life's good when you do that. Yeah, I think you're You're totally right. It's a really important way of taking care of yourself. Rest rest. People don't get enough rest. I really advocate taking a day off.

25:12 I don't care how busy you are. I've had a hugely busy, you know, set of things going on in my life for decades. Take one day off a week, no internet, no phone, yes, eat some yummy food, be with friends, listen to some music, no shopping man, yeah, and just get away from your life that you've been running around in, which is not necessarily where you want to be. You know. One of the things that I find fascinating and I and I get criticized many times, you know, from different people. I find that I just love to study. You know, I have a creouriosity that I just can't stop. So, you know, I'm sitting here in Thailand and all of a sudden, I'm studying Buddhism, and you know, and I'm comparing it to all these other backgrounds that I have, and so on and so forth.

26:11 And you know, as you say, you know, you you move forward with certain degrees, but then you continue to study and get curious about this and about that. What what have you found? If anything? Is there a value to curiosity, to really wanting to be a lifelong learner not only in new things, but also being able to observe your life in general. It is so significant. I'm so delighted you brought that up. Being curious makes life fun. For one thing, you just see something, maybe you've seen it, well, you didn't really see it. It's happened, it's come by you before, and you really didn't really notice that. It's kind of like a new word been there, but I wasn't paying attention.

27:02 So but it could be brand new as well. That's that's all. That's all part of it. But you say to yourself, what's going on here? Why? How does that work? How did that get to be? You know, what's the history of this. Being curious is super suit makes life so much fun. It's like ko goes on a vacation without discovering some new stuff. And it's also as an added bonus, uh, fantastically valuable in terms of suspending judgment and in dealing with conflict conflict resolution, because if you're curious, you're no longer engaged in the fight. You're no longer saying I'm right and you're wrong. You're saying I'm curious. Now why did you say that? I I didn't, I don't haven't thought that way myself.

27:51 But tell me more, I'm curious about how you came to that point of view. So curiousity is huge. Actually, there's been studies done that there are seven personal qualities that lead to life satisfaction and achievement, and curiosity is one of those seven. That's how important it is. Well, and as we get that way, then how do we become curious about our own life and the mistakes that we've made and what do we do about that? Maybe the starting point for that is some self esteem, some self love, but you might have to overcome as some mistakes you made and might have to sort of say, hey, I'm not a perfect person. I'm getting better.

28:42 You know that quote about zig Ziegler. You know, twenty thirty years ago, there probably have been people who said, well, I have some bad things to say, and they're all probably all true. Well, I think now moving along, working at being a better person, and all the time that population is shrunk a lot. I would like to believe nobody is saying something bad about me. So I think this is a critical ingredient to living a good, fulfilling life. Well, and you know, there's so many books have been written about failure and you know, all of those type of things. But when we talk about curiosity, and I appreciate what you said about it, because when we really think about going back and realizing that, you know, mistakes that we've made or experiences that we've had that may have been in our control or maybe they were not within our control, and yet curiosity allows us to go in and really start to analyze, and then you can come from the perspective of either victimhood or the perspective of what you know out of curiosity what value was there? And now what did I learn?

30:06 What has this helped me in any way create a different perspective of life, a different you know, affinity for life. What are your thoughts on that and how does that work well? I I again, this is one of these topics. I'm so glad you've brought up. I think the sense of being a victim is. I don't think I've yet to meet a person who felt like a victim where it was doing much for them. I think, I think again, the antidote for that sense of victim being a victim, I think it relates a lot to being powerless. And so if you can say I'm responsible, Yes this happened, it wasn't in my control, but what is in my control is how I feel about it and what I do next. That is in my control. That's a really huge thing. And you can also besides taking responsibility for those things, you can also make some choices along the way as to you know, how you want to show up again and again, you know, being curious about yourself and feeling good about yourself, breathing in some self love and being honest. I mean, I don't think there's anybody who's perfect. I haven't met him. If you have, let me know. But that's not the way life works. People Sometimes they bumble along and sometimes they do good stuff and then they don't do something

31:40 well for a while, they hurt somebody, and then they move on. They mess up. That's just that's the nature of things. Well, And you talk I think in your book a little bit about transitions. Now you have had you have had the experience of different transitions in your life. Okay, and we all have any depending on age and so forth. But you've had those transitions, and from what I can gather, you have been very much in control and have been a cause in doing those transitions. I think there are many people who are faced with transitions that are outside of their control.

32:22 It just happens, or you know, in general, things change in life. And do you find that people really struggle with that, and do you talk about that in the book, and how do people really manage some of those transitions in their life. I definitely do talk about it, because life is full of beginnings and endings, and in the middle of those two are transitions. And what's around transitions are a lot of emotions. There's fear you knew what was going on before, it may not have been great, and that's maybe why transition is coming up something new. But you can hold that in an angry way about what you're leaving behind, and you're leaving a company, and you're very upset with your old boss, and you could also be very fearful about what's coming next. That These are powerful, very powerful emotions. So you've got to come to terms what are you feeling? Take some time. I recommend, highly recommend journaling what am I doing? You know, a lot of emotions are not just clean one type of thing.

33:30 There's multiple things going on, multiple emotions all wrapped up in a gooey, messy thing. You got to take the time to separate those out, figure out what's going on, how are you feeling about it? So at some point, as you make progress with this, you can go back to who you are. You know, what do you stand for, what are your values? What is your purpose here? And that will then realign you, hopefully align you with what the next step is and you create some options for yourself and then there's a lot of planning, a lot of the implementation around the next step. If you're thoughtful about this, you're looking inside, You're looking at yourself, not what somebody else says you should do listen to that you know and that voice, talk to yourself, not listen to yourself.

34:23 Talk to yourself with some positive things to say, and create some options. Analyze the options. What's going to work best, what's going to work best for you, maybe for your family, and then you say, okay, everything is an experiment in life. It may work out really well day one, and it may have to take some tweaks to get to the place where it's really humming along those that's okay, that's okay, well, And you know, it's interesting as I came out here to Thailand and have you know, shot to find some people who speaking Glisha and so you don't looking at the xpat community and so forth. It's been fascinating to meet different people and they've developed some great friends. And obviously they're at that point of retirement or close to retirement. They may be still leaving and doing a little bit of work from time to time. But one of the things I've observed for them and even for me as I'm out here, is what do I do because you know, I'm no longer doing this profession, I'm no longer doing that profession, which I had done after the first profession and so forth. And yet what I say, a lot happening is and not with everyone, but I see them having, you know, maybe a good day or maybe just relaxing and not doing much, and then in the evening they're all going to the bars and literally drinking themselves silly. And I look at that, and

35:58 you know, I think to degree is cultural, but in other areas it's land. I struggle with this sometimes is how do I what do I do? You know, I'm no longer doing these other things, and you know, I'm quote retired. What do I do? How do I age well in an environment that really does not necessarily encourage me to do that? And I have to actually take personal responsibility to do that. But how do we do that and being able to continue to live that life of thriving even when we've gotten to the point where we're retired. Yeah, well, I should say that thriving is the climate and not the weather, So it's the average over time. Anybody can have a bad day, So that want to lay that out. The second thing that's really important is to make some choices about who you're spending time with and if you're spending time with a whole lot of people who are retired and really have no purpose and are kind of flat.

37:06 There's a good chance you're going to kind of fallow a suit before long. So it's important to surround yourself with some people who are doing interesting things things are you're interested in yourself? Back to the curiosity thing, And it's important again to know yourself. What what kinds of things do you find interesting? Are you? Are you reading? Are you learning something new? You know, moving off to Thailand is a fantastic thing, bravo. You know so many things that are new, I'm sure for you, and and and that's that's good. Now you mentioned the ex pact community. I'm guessing that's because that's English, uh, And that's understandable. But part of the ex pat community could also be people from Europe or other parts of Asia or something.

37:54 And that could they could they could communicate well enough with you to make the time with them really good. One of the things I say about aging well is to have friends of all ages. That's rare. Most folks have friends plus or minus their own age, five years one one way or the other of their own age very common. You have so many more things that are familiar music, you know, growing up, the period of time you were growing up. All those things make it easy. And a lot of people probably have friends from when they were in school and it's all these decades later, but they made those friends then and that's who their friends are now.

38:36 Well, I say, okay, I understand that I'm not naive about this stuff. But if you have friends of all ages, somebody who's half your age or somebody who's ten or twenty years older, what's that doing for You got to learn some new language, you know, different vocabulary, different ways of talking about things. You know, it's the way they see the world is going to show up in different ways, and that's interesting and it keeps you fresh if you're asking questions and you're interested in them, And that's the whole crux of this Friends of all ages. Yes, and fortunately I head back to the US at the end of the month, so it's going to be and as so it's summer there and winter here. But what I find interesting, as you say, is and I love that concept is having friends of various ages because it really keeps you alert, it keeps you thinking, and you know, I mean, I have four kids, and so you know they are my friends as well as children as you have also. But it's interesting to get into those conversations with them and really listening and realizing that, wow, their modality of thinking, the way that they're approaching things.

39:54 As you said with your kids, you just you know they're doing things you would never do yourself. And yet you know that that really does keep that curiosity and that keeps that whole awareness alive. I want to add another part of this I think is really important is it's sort of your self attitude. You mentioned people who are retired, and this is this is a cultural concept. You know. I remember my dad's turning one hundred and two next Sunday, and he worked until he was ninety. He loved his work, He got so much positive feedback, he was helping so many people. He never wanted to stop. He finally had to because he couldn't see very well and he couldn't hear very well. So this, but this concept of being old retirement for a lot of people is just basically falling off a cliff. And one of the things that people have said they love about my book is that the appendix has a paragraph on seventy five books I've read that really impacted me, and one of those books is Younger next Year. It's a fantastic book.

41:07 I really recommend it to your listeners. Uh it's it's two two people come together, a doctor, an internist and a fellow who was a retired lawyer but who's very active. In one chapter is by the lawyer. The next chapters and the sort of medicine, the physiology of aging, and basically premises, no, you do not have to be older next year. There are things you can do. And part of it's a mindset of saying no, no, no, no. Having friends who are a lot younger helps you. You're not going to show up as the old guy. No, I don't want to be that guy. I want to I want to be coming with something interesting to say, maybe maybe a joke. Well, and my dad worked he was eighty six, so you know that was amazing too, so you're right. It just there's that motivation to say, you know what, I'm not going to let go just because I'm aging, and I think that becomes key. So as we close, and this is a tough thing to do, I know, but I'd love for you to just you know, share a thought that you have that you'd like to share with the audience to just kind of sum up what you really are trying to get across and the message that you're trying to get across to the audience. I think

42:37 the central message in the work I'm doing now and in my book is about the power, the enormous power we have to make choices which will get us on the road to thriving. These are choices of how we spend our time, who we spend our time with, and even our emotions. That might surprise people, but we have choices about our emotions and especially how we hold on to them. I love it. I love it. How do people find your book? Thank you? Well, you can go it's it's of course at Amazon, but it's also at all the independence stores. I will be doing an audiobook this summer. I'm excited about that. But it's in ebook, paperback, and hardcover. Uh. And you can also go to my website, my book website rand saylik dot com, R A N D S E l I G dot com. You can order the book there.

43:35 You can learn more about me, more about what the book is about, some amazing testimonials, A list of podcasts all add years when it comes out, and yeah, it's great. It's great. So you can go either way. And you can also find me on LinkedIn. Well. And the book that you were talking about, what was the name of that book again that you said was among the lists that you had Younger next Year, Younger next Year. Okay, and you know you talk about audible IOSM. You know you're going to do that. It's great. I wonder how many people really think about the fact that as they're driving to work, and particularly those that are community commuting in a large city, you know, for an hour or so, and they're just listening to music, they're listening to news and so forth, how how much can be gained by listening to books. I try to walk, you know, each morning and for an hour or so.

44:36 And what I find is, if I've got my AirPods in and I am listening to a book, I'm learning, I'm doing something very effectively. And I think, you know, you have brought up such an interesting thing about how important it is to be curious, to read, to continue to discover things about different areas. I like what you're saying, doctor Doug, and but I also want to say that, and somebody asked me this at one of my book talks recently. He said, well, when I go for a walk, I'm always got my earbuds in and I'm listening to a podcast or a you know, a book, And is that okay? And I said, yeah, yeah, learning, being interested is of course a fantastic thing. But occasionally take the earbuds out. Just slow down, listen to yourself, just enjoy things, you know, be with yourself, embrace that, and then take a look at that little something going on. Just stop and look at that. That amazing it's world we live in. It's so many fascinating nature. Mother Nature has done this amazing thing. Just absorb it. Stop, yes, just stop and enjoy the environment. I totally agree with you, Ram, Thanks so much for being on the show.

46:02 I really appreciate this is fascinating, and folks, I hope that you will really look at this and if you find this interesting, get that book and really see if you can discover some things about yourself and find a way to really thrive in your life in a much different way than perhaps you've been experiencing. This is doctor Doug saying thank you so much for listening. Hope you'll join us again soon.